Several hours later Phanya intercepted Ricky as he left the garage. Phanya had mostly just taken a stroll to get away from Tapper's well-meaning pestering, she didn't really expect for the Ratfinks to need any help from an outsider with a busted arm. She did get sucked into a heated debate and, although Phanya couldn't resolve it, she learned a surprising amount on the intricacies of Ratfink driving formations. Though she did wish that they would stop calling her "Bettie."

  Ricky, however, nearly skipped across the pavement. "Score! Check it out!" He presented a squat metal cone, as thick around as his head and twice as long, holding it up like a grand prize.

  "Nice lump."

  "Ha ha. It's a real gearbox! I get to work on one! A busted one, anyways. Where's Tapper? He'll want to see this."

  They found their robot inside the jitney, slumped in defeat over the workbench. The medgel packet lay spread before him, divvied up into minuscule doses that Tapper had run several experiments on. Some were boiled away, some were dried out and ground up, others were mixed with various reagents.

  Ricky instantly recognized the setup. "Hey, you got some working medgel! No luck trying to identify its components, huh?"

  "Worse yet, I identified the whole concoction," Tapper groaned into the table. Without looking up he slid over a scrap of paper, where he had neatly written how the system identified a packet of field-ready medgel.

  [New crafting variant found: Balanced +1 XP (Bartender)]

  [Balanced Minor Regeneration Potion

  This mass-produced concoction will heal exactly one injury when directly applied as a salve, or drink it to stabilize internal injuries. Any excess is automatically flushed and will not cause overhealing or potion toxicity, though it is not strong enough to regrow lost limbs.]

  "It's just a healing potion," Tapper sulked, again. He had been repeating it to himself for several minutes now. "I risked the trust of our allies to acquire this with borderline subterfuge, and it's just a healing potion."

  Phanya tried her best to reassure Tapper, but Ricky's limbs all went numb at once. He would've dropped the precious gearbox if his hauler suit didn't automatically brace itself, and Ricky hurried to set it safely aside so he could read the slip a second time. "And you're sure this is real, official medgel?"

  "The lab's AI certainly thought it was real. Maybe it's just too old?" Phanya offered, mouthing the rest of her confusion to Ricky over Tapper's head. Where was he going with this?

  "No, you guys don't get it!" A manic grin spread on Ricky's face as he explained, "We're talking about medical nanobots here, primo stuff that only the biggest corpos still know how to make." Ricky's eyes started to dart as his mind raced, now half-mumbling to himself. "Except for Tapper. His is more random, sure, but it's just as strong. That's a GOOD thing!"

  Phanya looked down at her arm, still in its sling. The wound had stopped hurting altogether by the time she woke up this morning, probably right when the injury vanished from her character sheet, but she hadn't taken the bandage off yet to avoid looking at what remained. "Just as strong, huh?" she murmured, and shrugged the sling off. Her former bowling shirt fell to the ground in a wet heap, and Phanya gasped. "Jeez, not even a scar. You two didn't see how bad that acid burn got me, I'm pretty sure I would've lost this arm if I didn't douse it in Tapper's potion. Like, my skin was melting. But you'd never know it now."

  Ricky just laughed. "See? Just like high science from the Old Days, but he does it with freaking bug guts and octolusk slime!"

  Tapper's eyebrows shot up in belayed recognition. "Oh! I was so concerned with improving myself, I didn't consider my starting position!"

  "Exactly! And you're only going to get better at it! Man, and I was worried about all the repeated head trauma, too." Ricky sighed, feeling a weight leave his shoulders. The other two mirrored his relief for a moment, before Ricky's train of thought jumped tracks.

  "Okay now scooch, I need to use the workbench. The Ratfinks are going to walk me through on how to disassemble, clean, and reassemble a real gearbox! They even let me read an actual manual! But I can't keep any of it with me, so they're letting me practice on this busted one. So move move move." Ricky nudged Tapper out of the chair, and the instant he set the gear assembly down everything else fell to the background.

  Phanya scoffed, but at least she knew Ricky wouldn't be going anywhere else. "You alright, Taps?"

  "Right as revenue, Phanya!" Tapper chirped. "In fact, I am quite emboldened now that I no longer feel like a complete failure! I must endeavor to improve my crafting skill, just like Ricky."

  "Well, I'm glad you two have that to keep you busy. I can't craft skrat, so… guess I'll try and sleep off this essence damage." Phanya looked at her healed arm again, still slick from a mixture of old potion and liquefied flesh, and recoiled slightly. "After a long shower."

  Tapper checked on Makenna, who continued her pattern of insisting that she was fine and did not need to leave her personal space. She also sounded quite tired, so Tapper let his concern rest and exited into the late afternoon heat. The party had to leave Ratfink territory before sunset, and Tapper spent all available time scavenging through the detritus in and around the garage.

  The Ratfinks didn't care so long as Tapper didn't touch their usable goods, and by the time evening fell he had accumulated the dirty dregs of biodiesel from discarded canisters into a single jerry can. Vehicular runoff from various puddles filled a few small bottles, ranging from used oil to brightly-colored coolant and iridescent battery acid. Hopefully the time he spent trying to separate the filthy fluids into individual bottles wasn't wasted effort, but Salazar's cursing when he came looking for Tapper said otherwise.

  Salazar stomped ahead while Tapper lugged everything to the jitney and found Phanya fast asleep in the medical bed, just like she promised; Ricky still sat at the workbench, but he had moved to tinkering on his gizmo with a frustrated furrow in his brow.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  "The transmission housing is warped shut," Ricky grunted, not looking up from his work as Tapper entered the jitney. "Pretty sure that's why they let me have it. Gonna see if I can fine-tune my Split spell just right and — " The jitney lurched forward as soon as Tapper shut the door without any warning from Salazar, jostling Ricky and breaking his concentration. Gears and springs flew in all directions, and Ricky let out a pained groan that had been building all afternoon.

  Tapper joined Ricky on the ground to help pick up the components and asked, "What is troubling you, Ricky? I thought you could craft your Split gizmo with relative ease now."

  Ricky scoffed. "Yeah, if I want the gearbox to explode into metal dust. Getting it to just split the casing without damaging anything is a lot more specific, and that apparently means there's no margin for error in building the gizmo. Not at my current level, at least. Especially since I can't just cast the spell one 'handful' at a time without jamming it up even worse."

  "Ah, I understand. Not to worry my friend, I am sure we will figure something out after a nice hearty dinner!"

  The jitney parked at the same place as last night, hidden among the garbage dunes a short distance from Ratfink territory. Tapper immediately started preparing dinner with the remains of the dead bugs they left in the shade, but by now his compatriots had grown a little apprehensive.

  "Taps, are you sure those are still safe to eat?" Ricky asked. "They've been sitting out in the open for, like, two days now."

  "Indeed, but remember that I am equipped specifically to determine whether food and drink is safe for organic consumption." Tapper did not add that he had to drop his internal parameters from "VIP" down to "lower middle class" before any of the meat qualified, but he still managed to fill the cauldron. The rest of it barely passed as animal feed, which Kakisi was more than happy to gorge himself on. Shells and all.

  Ricky kept watching Kakisi in quiet awe as he worked on his own bowl. "Man, where does such a little guy put it all? Has to be some kind of magic ability."

  Tapper stepped out of the jitney, after giving Salazar his meal and leaving a bowl by the bunker door for Makenna, and gently scratched the tip of Kakisi's shell. He felt an echo of his familiar's pleasure, and Tapper vowed to interact with the octolusk more often so he could grow accustomed to the strange connection.

  "That is a logical assumption, for I do not rightly know," Tapper mused. "It is strange how the system has directly connected my mind to this organic creature, yet no direct information flows through. Only wordless intuition; I merely feel his feelings. I cannot help but wonder if that connection, by its existence, is subconsciously influencing how I interpret feelings. Unless I consciously dedicate most of my CPU to the task of reading him, that is."

  Ricky hummed in thought as he chewed. "I wouldn't worry about that, Tapper. Not unless you start randomly feeling hungry all the time."

  "He needs to worry a little bit," Phanya countered. "Because people that aren't careful about their emotions stop thinking and make stupid moves. Like challenging giant flying monsters to duels."

  Tapper's shoulders drooped, and Ricky quietly kicked Phanya in the shins. She swallowed a sarcastic quip back and blew out the small flame flickering in her voice, before it had a chance to grow. "Look Tapper, I'm not downplaying the good you did. You distracted the monster until Ricky showed up, and that's great. You might've even beat the damn thing yourself with enough time. But you can't lose your cool like that every time one of us gets hurt, or you'll just get yourself killed."

  "Especially now that we know you're a walking medgel factory! That means the best way you can keep your promise is by not going all martyr on us, so you can stick around with your magic."

  Tapper's eyebrows wiggled. "Thank you for the compliment, Ricky! But unfortunately I am of no use in that fashion, since we are currently all out of ingredients. But I am confident that darkling crawlers are not the sole reagent with healing properties, so in the interim I will experiment with what we have on hand."

  Ricky watched as Tapper dumped the contents of his trusty plastic bag onto their folding table, his interest quickly turning to concern. "Uh hey buddy, are you expecting us to drink motor oil? And… battery acid?"

  "Probably not, my friend! I do not believe that all potions are meant for consumption, but discovery requires experimenting with exotic reagents. I must feel it out, so to speak." Tapper ran his hand around the cauldron's rim, feeling the rough iron under his delicate bartender fingers. "And for that reason, I must ask a favor of you two."

  Phanya and Ricky noticed the shift in Tapper's voice, and both sat a little straighter as he continued.

  "I have noticed a pattern where my magical abilities grow stronger when I am in a heightened emotional state, as opposed to the rigorous logical requirements of Ricky's magic. At first I believed that to only affect my spellcasting, but my emotional draw to this cauldron indicates that it may feed into my potion brewing, as well. I wish to test that theory by intentionally lowering the control I have over my emotions, for a time."

  "Tapper — "

  "Hold please, Phanya. I am also well aware that strong emotions can lead me to act with little forethought, so I will compensate by throttling my processor speed. Let's say, by 50%. This should slow me down enough that you two can stop me if I make a blatantly egregious judgment. My bartending experience is currently at 6/10, and with a little bit of serendipity I might just have enough reagents here for a breakthrough. With how much Ricky is enjoying his new Blacksmithing rank, I believe it is worth the risk."

  A beat of awkward silence passed. "Please?"

  To Phanya's surprise, both Tapper and Ricky turned to her for approval. "Don't look at me, I don't do computers or magic. That's your thing, Ricky, so you better watch him." Ricky, naturally, was entirely on board.

  Tapper nodded his thanks, and throttled his CPU while he lowered his emotional firewalls. Extraneous processes slowed down or stopped altogether and intuition filled the vacuum, flooding Tapper's senses with new sensations. Everything felt so much clearer when he didn't waste time calculating things! Now, he could appreciate how the clouds reflected the last rays of twilight, faint fiery embers swirling in a wine-dark ocean.

  Now, when Tapper ran a finger around his precious cauldron he could feel deep droning in response, a bass singing bowl heard only in the aether. He heard it now, and started humming to match. The cauldron practically thrummed with eager potential, and Tapper hurried to pile some cobwood scraps under its feet. He didn't need to light a fire — he had prepared their dinner without any external heat, to Salazar's confusion — but the cauldron wanted it. He could feel it.

  Ricky and Phanya didn't notice anything different, at first. Tapper just stood frozen, staring at the sky while his hand kept scraping against the cauldron's rim. Then he started to hum a tune, something nonsensical and impossible to follow but clearly not random. The robot looked pleased when he lit the fire, its crackling light playing subtle tricks as it reflected off Tapper's faceplate.

  He held one hand out over his bottle collection, and without the constraints of his social programming Tapper's limbs flowed and jerked in minor ways. Sometimes a joint bent the wrong direction, sometimes a hand snaked around with unnatural grace. Nothing that impeded him, especially while slowed to half speed, but just enough for his movements to look distinctly inhuman.

  After all, there was no reason for Tapper to act like a human when he could instead be a witch.